A measure to license and inspect commercial dog and cat breeders — passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton earlier this year — went into effect on July 1. The new regulations throw into sharp relief Dayton’s refusal to accept any state licensing or inspection of abortion facilities, which perform thousands of surgical procedures on Minnesota women each year.

by find signs of awareness in patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state: The new research suggests that standard tests may overlook patients who have some consciousness, and that someday some kind of communication may be possible. In the strongest example, a 29-year-old patient was able to answer yes-or-no questions by visualizing specific scenes […]